Known thermal label/tag printers include thermal printheads containing individual printing elements. When a printing element fails, it may result in a discontinuity in the printing. Prior thermal label printers have used data dot shift routines to shift data around a failed printing element so that the failed printing element is aligned with "zero" print data. This feature extends the useful life of a thermal printhead. However, such routines do not provide any warning as to when a printing element is failing.